Chapter Four

“Find a way down to them,” I barked to the others, already starting forwards, searching the lot for an entrance or access hatch.

The cab took off in a blast of downdraft, the gentle early morning drizzle blasted out in all directions as the high speed transport rocketed upwards into the night, curving away from the wall and back towards the center of the city.

“I’ve got drag marks!” Gessh called, and I cursed, diverting from the building I’d been headed for, and hurrying back to catch up with the others.

Gessh was in the lead, shotgun at the ready as she approached a building on the other side of the lot.

This was an old squat building, three stories, wider at the base than the top, and angled slightly inwards. The walls had clearly been designed to draw attention, and in some long forgotten past they might have actually looked imposing.

Now they were covered in graffiti, most of the windows were smashed, and the inside looked like an entrance to the underworld, never mind the undercity.

As I passed through the ruined doorway, the door itself long since ripped from its hinges, I couldn’t help but shiver. I wasn’t a religious man, but fuck.

I really could see this kind of place as an entrance to a hell of lost souls.

“Looks like some old tech worshipping sect,” Reign guessed, and I frowned, looking at her, before moving in closer.

“The rogue AI?” I asked, glancing around at the inside of the building, stripped down to the goddamn framework as we moved in deeper.

“The Keeper?” Reign snorted. “Dammit, Kabutt, I know you were army through and through, but seriously? It’s embarrassing how little you know at times. The Keeper is supposed to be one of the very first Tier Fives, it went rogue and escaped into Aug-World. Now it helps or hinders as it decides, right?”

“Yeah?”

“This looks more like one of those old upload centers, where the pure chrome believers used to jack in and try and upload themselves into the next world…”

“Fucking religious nutters,” I growled.

“Found it!” Gessh called back. “Hatch in the floor, recently covered over again, but there’s blood stains leading to it, or I’d have missed it.”

“Who the hell covered it over?” Luna groused. “Specters don’t think like that?”

“You think there’s someone else?” I asked, heading over, and wincing as distant gunfire echoed from somewhere below.

“Not sure, just specters don’t usually think like that, or at all. Could be a ghoul-led incursion?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Maybe not, maybe it’s slavers using specters as cover, doesn’t matter. What matters is we’ve got a team stuck down there. Find a way to open that.” I ordered, before sending a call request to Julius.

“Kabutt,” he greeted, yawning. “How’re we looking? You found ’22?”

“We’ve got gunfire below, and signs of a firefight, no bodies, looks like they were dragged down and the entrance sealed…”

“Found it!” Luna called, triggering a release, as the hatch clunked, the locks disengaging.

“We’re heading in.” I shrugged. “We’ll be back in touch as soon as we save them all.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Then I guess we won’t be back in touch.” I snorted. “Fucks’ sake Julius, try and keep up, man.”

“If you get in the shit, pull out,” he ordered after a long few seconds. “We’ll always try and come after our teams, but sometimes, you need to be realistic. I’m gathering reinforcements now, but we’re at least an hour away, so if you get in the shit and can’t get out, get your backs to a wall and hunker down. We’ll come for you.”

“Appreciate that.” I cut the connection, looking to Reign who was standing by the hatch, hand on the lever on the top, and watching to make sure I was ready.

“He give you the ‘we’ll come for you, we’re all family’ speech?” she asked.

“Said we were to be realistic, and if we couldn’t get to them, to hunker down and they’d be with us in an hour.”

“Sounds like he’s getting pessimistic in his old age.” She sighed. “Used to be he promised he’d always come for us, then we’d all rib him about that later.”

“Dirty bastard.” Luna grunted, then nodded at the hatch. “Ready.”

“Ready,” Gessh said.

“Ready,” I agreed, rifle at my shoulder and zeroed in.

“Opening.” Reign grunted, hauling back, then staggering when the hatch opened easily.

The three of us stepped up, guns pointing down, the blood all over the hatch and on the rungs in the tunnel leading down making it clear someone had dumped the bodies in… then they’d followed them, judging from the smear patterns in the drying blood.

There was nobody in sight now, and we followed them in.

At the bottom of the ladder, I took point, with Luna behind me, then Reign, and last of all Gessh, as we passed bodies piled to the side of the corridor, slowly leaking blood.

“This doesn’t look good,” Luna muttered, and I had to agree, moving quickly, but as quietly as I could in the lead.

The bodies we passed were mixed, some specters, clearly old and long ‘dead’ even if they’d been moving around under their own steam.

The others?

A mix of city dwellers of all ages and sizes were laid here and there, arms flopping to the floor and blood seeping from them, pooling under…

“Shit!” Reign snarled. “Bet you it’s fucking chromers!”

“What?” I froze and looked ahead down the corridor, totally confused as she started swearing and Luna and Gessh joined her. “What the hell?” I hissed, still staring down my rifle, watching my zone.

“Chromers… you know, those nutters who believe in joining with the machine?”

“The full metal ones?” I asked, confused. “What the hell has this to do with…”

“There’s some that follow specters!” Reign clarified.

“Why?” I asked, moving off again, hurrying down the corridor, checking connecting passages and keeping going, following the blood trail that ran down the middle, as the last of the bodies fell away behind us.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“You know those rumors about the sentient specters?” she said in a voice pitched to only carry to us.

“Yeah?”

“There’s rumors that some of the chromers took to doing deals with them.”

“Why?” I asked, shaking my head. “First off, specters , they’ll kill you if you have mods, and all chromers have is fucking mods, certainly no brains!”

“Yeah, and if you meet a sentient specter it’s never going to end well for you. They’re supposed to be like that thing that chased us after the bio-farms, fucking mental and heavily armed,” Gessh added.

“All rebuilt and shit,” Luna agreed succinctly.

“Yeah, well, some of the chromers have splintered off from the main sects… they decided that maybe the baseline specters are those who weren’t pure enough, and the sentient ones? They’re prophets or some shit…” Reign said with disgust. “Seriously, don’t ask me why, because I don’t fucking know, I just remember Julius saying a bunch of them had to be run out of the guild a couple of weeks ago. He tried to figure out why they were doing what they were doing, probably hoping to sell our services or something. They were trying to find out where the biggest concentrations of specters were, to go and do… something? Fuck knows what, but Julius kicked them out after listening to their mad shit, and a few of them went mental at him for ‘defiling’ their beliefs or something.”

“Okay, so religious nutters, what’s that got to do with—”

“Those bodies back there had their mods still. If it was specters? They’d have stripped them, and left the bodies out in the open…”

“You’re thinking it’s chromers? Why not scavs?” Luna asked.

“This place,” Reign said. “It’s set up and hidden. If it was scavs using it, they’d be raiding the local area for gear then fucking off back out into the wastes.”

“Could be smugglers,” Gessh suggested, when gunfire rang out suddenly from a corridor to the right, one we’d just passed.

“Team-22!” I barked, sending the call to any of the seven man team that we’d been given the contact details for, and hating that I was reliant on keystone calls rather than a proper military grade tac-net. “Sound off for fuck’s sake, this is Team-17!”

This time when there was no response. I shook my head and barked an order to the others. “Fuck it, follow the gunfire.”

Luna was the closest to the corridor and took the lead, shotgun raised as I fell in behind her, the whole team picking up speed as we ran towards the sound of rapid fire. We made it maybe ten meters before a T-junction gave us a choice of right and left, and the gunfire led us down the left passage, passing through a cunningly concealed fake wall that we’d have totally missed, if not for the fact it was left wide open.

This time, when we reached the end of the corridor, it led down another flight of stairs, and then opened out into a large room. There were dozens of long tables running side by side with what looked like a failed hydroponics or drug lab setup, but about a quarter of the tables had bodies laid on them in various stages of being carved up, and the back wall was entirely taken up with refrigeration and storage lockers.

I paused, staring at the literal chop-shop before us, in horror. We all joked about them. Hell, carvers’ premises were so heavily joked about and been called chop-shops for so long that it was practically the official name for them now. I couldn’t remember the ‘real’ name for them off the top of my head, but this?

This was a true ‘chop-shop’. A black site where people were being rendered down to body parts for sale.

A bin sat to the right hand side of the room as we moved slowly through it, eyes wide, and a single glance in revealed masses of damaged organs, ones that had presumably been ruined in the removal, or infected or diseased or whatever.

“I… I’m changing my guess,” Reign whispered. “Chromers wouldn’t do this…”

“Who would?” Luna asked, equally horrified.

“It doesn’t matter!” I snapped. “Focus!”

I took the lead again, running now, splashing through puddles of blood and piss, heading for the far end of the room, and a door propped slightly ajar by a foot.

I reached the door and pushed it open with the barrel of my rifle, seeing the figure in full ‘medical’ scrubs on the floor before me. A shotgun blast in their lower back had ended their interest in carving people up permanently.

I stepped over them, the room beyond a mess of splatted blood. A wall panel, presumably once an integrated screen, flashed and fizzed sparks, cracks leading out from a central impact point, one that judging from the strands of hair matted in the blood there, had come from the body slumped on the ground below it.

“Shit, that’s Christos.” Reign cursed, hurrying past me, and kneeling next to the body, checking the neck for a pulse, then shaking her head as she looked back at me. “Dead.”

“How much ammo has he got?” I asked, and she frowned, then checked.

“Plenty, two full mags for the rifle, one for the pistol and…”

“Grab them,” I ordered. “The message we got was from the team lead for ’22, Badger, and he was low on ammo, and surrounded by specters. If this is one of the team, up here, and dead with plenty of ammo? What the fuck happened?”

“No clue, let’s move on though,” she agreed, falling in as we took the exit at the back of the room. The next two rooms were empty pretty much, then a kitchen—little used—and finally a pair of small living quarters…

…then a wall. We’d reached the end of the road.

“What the hell?” I snapped, confused to all fuck. “Where the hell are they?”

“Christos was cold,” Reign said. “There’s no way that gunfire was from him.”

“Fuck’s sake, we miss a room or something?” I asked, as we started heading back, only for Luna to stop us, sniffing the air in the second of the empty rooms.

“You smell that?” she asked, and I shook my head.

“Smells like… old boots?” Reign asked.

“And sweat and blood,” Gessh agreed, nodding. “I thought it was the other room when we came in, that it was those fuckers, but it’s not.”

“I can’t smell anything besides Christos and whoever that doc was,” I said, shaking my head.

“Yeah, well, you’re only human.” Reign smiled, taking the edge off the comment, as I glared at her.

“You’re all half human,” I pointed out.

“And that’s why we’re having difficulty pinpointing it, rather than seeing it instantly, so shut the fuck up alright, boss?” Gessh snapped, sniffing as she and Luna moved around the room. “Here…”

The area she pointed to was in a clear section of the room, sure, but it was literally just that, there was fuck all special about it, two light switches, and a long overhead recessed strip light that bathed the room in a dull yellowish tinged light.

The wall was tiled from floor to ceiling, and lines of cracks ran between the tiles, making the wall look weird but…

Two light switches.

I saw it at the same time that Reign did, reaching out and flicking the one on the left, getting nothing whatsoever, and the then the one on the right, again to no response.

I frowned, having been sure we’d found it, until Luna sighed and pushed Reign aside, then flicked both switches in time with her sister, who’d stepped up without being told.

There was an audible clunk and whirr, and the entire section of the wall started moving, sliding back hinged at the top and lifting at the bottom, to reveal a new staircase, one that was entirely metal and roughly maintained, as the stench hit us full force from whatever was ahead.

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